Various sensing systems currently exist for performing collision warning and countermeasure system operations, such as detection, classification, tracking, and relative distance and velocity estimation of objects within close proximity of a host vehicle. Sensing systems also exist for performing other sensing system operations, such as windshield wiper and defogger operations, occupant sensing, classification, and tracking operations, and adaptive cruise control operations.
Collision warning and countermeasure system operations include providing a vehicle operator knowledge and awareness of vehicles and objects that are within close proximity of the host vehicle to prevent colliding with those objects. Countermeasure systems exist in various passive and active forms. Some countermeasure systems are used to aid in the prevention of a collision, others are used to aid in the prevention of an injury to a vehicle occupant.
Certain collision warning and countermeasure systems are able to detect, identify, and classify an object within close proximity of the host vehicle and warn the host vehicle operator, such that the operator can take precautionary steps to prevent a collision or injury. Other collision warning and countermeasure systems activate passive or active countermeasures such as airbags, load limiting seatbelts, or brake control whereby the system itself aids in the prevention of a collision or an injury.
Countermeasure systems may also be able to detect occupant characteristics and to determine which safety system countermeasures to perform and the times and rates of the countermeasures in response to those characteristics. Example restraint countermeasures that may be enabled are seat belt pretensioners and airbags. Occupant characteristics may include occupant positions within a seat, occupant size and weight, or other known occupant characteristics.
Some countermeasure systems incorporate external sensors for the detection of road and lane markings information, which can be used for vehicle position determination and future path prediction. The path prediction information may be utilized to perform countermeasures.
External sensors for object detection are used to identify and classify objects. The resulting object data is used to determine primary targets of interest for vehicle features, such as adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, collision mitigation by braking, and pedestrian protection. Each vehicle feature has a unique set of target selection requirements. The computational demand of sequentially processing each of the detected objects against each of the target selection requirements results in a need for a high-powered processor. High-powered processors are expensive and are thus infeasible for automotive applications.
Thus, in an effort to improve countermeasure system performance there exists a need for an improved method of selecting and processing targets. In addition, there is a need to improve the accuracy of countermeasure system path prediction and to have knowledge as to the extent of that accuracy for improved countermeasure activation, determination, and operation.